How Did Doc Hurley's Scholarship Foundation Founder?

Few have done as much for as many young people in Hartford as Walter "Doc" Hurley. The legendary athlete and educator gave direction, helped countless youths get into college and even, through his foundation, helped pay for it.

Sadly, the foundation he worked so hard to build is in shambles, as The Courant's Vanessa de la Torre and Matthew Kauffman reported Sunday. It has lost its tax-exempt status, it hasn't filed federal tax or state registration forms in five years and it has seen its board of trustees melt away. It's awarded no more than two new scholarships in the past five years.

On Monday, the state attorney general's office and the Department of Consumer Protection commenced an investigation of the foundation. The investigators will try to answer a number of questions, notably: What happened to the money? The foundation, now run by Mr. Hurley's daughter Muriel Hurley-Carter, had about $1.7 million in 2001. Now it has less than a third of that, at most.

Where is the money, indeed?

Mr. Hurley, one of Hartford's top athletes of the last century, became an administrator at Weaver High School, his alma mater. In the early 1970s he began raising money for the Doc Hurley Scholarship Fund to give needy students modest help paying for college.

From the mid-'70s to the late '90s, the fund — later renamed the Doc Hurley Scholarship Foundation — gave out scholarships averaging about $1,000 to nearly 400 seniors. Mr. Hurley's work inspired corporate leaders in Hartford, who raised at least $1.7 million in 2001 to give bigger scholarships to more students. The tidy nest egg should have assured that Mr. Hurley's legacy would continue indefinitely. It is now in grave danger.

From 2002, when Ms. Hurley-Carter began drawing a $55,000 annual salary, to 2007, when reporting stopped, spending shot up — but not for scholarships. Scholarship spending stayed around $47,000 a year, while overall annual spending grew from less than $190,000 in 2002 to more than $400,000 in 2007, The Courant reported.

The $1.7 million on hand in 2001 dropped to $880,000 in assets in 2007. Ms. Hurley-Carter estimated there is now "about $550,000" left in the foundation's bank account. She unpersuasively blames her father's illness about five years ago, plus heavy expenses and lack of help for the foundation's troubles.

The foundation's trustees, when they were active, seem to have focused on picking worthy students, and not on the foundation's finances. There's a lesson there.

A goal of the investigation is to see if the ship can be righted, the foundation returned to its mission. Let us hope. Doc Hurley, now 91, never intended to stop helping young people.